“It takes up so much space in our landfills,” said Colleen Sinclair, who is the Coon Rapids Recycling Coordinator. “It’s trillium based. It’s plastic. Never going to go away. Stay the way it is forever.” There aren’t many options for recycling Styrofoam in Minnesota. But fortunately for North Metro residents the Coon Rapids facility is equipped to do just that. The recycling center wants to become a foam home for people getting rid of Styrofoam, so it doesn’t wind up in the wrong places. “The recycling center is primarily for Anoka County residents only, however with receiving the state bonding money the rest of the state can use our Styrofoam program,” Sinclair said. The Coon Rapids recycling center receives a huge amount of Styrofoam each day. Workers feed the plastic into a compacting machine where it is compressed and comes out in Styrofoam cubes. “It’s super popular,” Sinclair said. “We have so many requests from small businesses and residents all over the state.” Eco-friendly Bringing Styrofoam to the recycling center is easy and also eco-friendly. “You can not recycle it curbside just because there is no space and they don’t have a sorting mechanism to pull out Styrofoam,” Sinclair said. “So we are able to work with smaller markets.” Besides Styrofoam, there are many other items recycled at this facility. People are more aware these days about properly getting rid of certain things. Said Sinclair: “We’re definitely in a shift, which is kind of nice.” From small appliances to light bulbs, the Coon Rapids recycling center takes just about anything. “Within the last five years there seems to be a little more ownership in what people do with their materials, Sinclair said…”Our focus is hard to manage materials. We let the residents kind of tell us what that is. The phone calls will dictate the items we look into.” The Coon Rapids recycle center is expanding. There will be a new building to store cardboard on the east side of the facility opening soon.
FOAM HOME! COON RAPIDS RECYCLING CENTER WANTS YOUR STYROFOAM
COON RAPIDS, Minn. (3/3/2023) – Styrofoam is not exactly Earth-friendly.
